Businesses warned over state-sponsored cyber attacks

Inside Small Business

28th Mar 2022

On the occasion of World Backup Day on 31 March Australian businesses are being warned to be on their guard against the heightened risk of cyber attacks not just from Russia, but also state-sponsored attackers from other parts of the world.

“All criminals will be seeking to exploit the current chaos, so it is critical that Australian businesses take steps now to ensure their backups are air-gapped and ideally penetration tested,” Michael McKinnon, CIO of cybersecurity company Tesserent, said.

McKinnon added that organisations typically fall into either those who backup all their valuable data, and those who don’t.

“Whether it’s a ransomware attack, failure of critical infrastructure, or even through human error, we see organisations suffer the loss of critical data every year,” he added.

McKinnon pointed out that a robust backup that involves testing recovery procedures is crucial for protecting data, which is an organisation’s most critical and often irreplaceable asset. He also warned that cybercriminals are now targeting backups before going after core data in order to make recovery more difficult for the end-user.

“Backups are like the anti-locking brakes and airbags of the IT world,” McKinnon advised. “They ensure your data remains safe no matter what happens. This World Backup Day, encourage all your team to review and enhance their backup strategy and processes.”

This story originally appeared in our sister publication, Inside Small Business.